Page:The Judicial Capacity of the General Convention Exemplified.djvu/24

stances of the case are considered. And if Mr. Miller’s testimony is to be set aside as worthless, then we must believe him to be an exceedingly base and unscrupulous man. We must believe that he fabricated the statement which he says he got from Mr. Wilks on board the steam-boat, and that he never read to Mr. Wilks his copy of that statement, or that Mr. W., at any rate, never acknowledged its correctness if read to him; and that Mr. Miller, in making affidavit to all this, has been guilty of deliberate perjury. Certainly we ought not to believe a man capable of so great wickedness, without the best of evidence. Yet the General Convention, is seems, without any evidence which it dares produce, believes that Mr. Miller has perjured himself in this case. For how, otherwise, could the Convention set aside Mr. Miller’s testimony, and report, as it has, "that Mr. Wilks has satisfactorily established his innocence of the charges made by Mr. Barrett,” having in its hands this testimony of Mr. Miller, which, if admitted, proved Mr. W. guilty. For the charges made by Mr. Barrett, were based upon the written statements of Mr. Miller, whose correctness he has since affirmed with the solemnity of an oath. The verdict of the Convention sets aside Mr. Miller’s sworn testimony as altogether worthless; and we are not permitted to know upon what kind or what amount of evidence that body relies for proof of Mr. Miller’s perjury. It would seem right and proper thatI, at least, who am the aggrieved party, should know upon what grounds Mr. Miller’s solemn testimony in this case was set aside, or by what evidence Mr. Wilks’ innocence was so u satisfactorily established." But although the evidence, as I learn, was presented in writing, I have not been able to this day to obtain one line of it, notwithstanding my repeated efforts to do so. I was informed that Mr. John L. Jewett was one of the witnesses, and the main one upon which the Convention relied in setting aside as worthless the testimony of Mr. Miller. And I wrote Mr. Jewett three times, politely requesting him to furnish me with a copy of his testimony: but Mr. J. did not condescend to answer either of my letters. Hearing that Mr. Secretary Hayward had all the testimony in writing, I addressed a polite note to him, asking for a copy of that which was supposed to invalidate the testimony of Mr. Miller; but Mr. Secretary Hayward positively refused to furnish me with any of that testimony. I then wrote twice to Mr. Wilks himself, as politely as I knew how, offering to publish in this pamphlet any evidence which he had, or had presented to the Convention, in proof of his innocence, if he would furnish me with a copy of it. The following is my last letter to him, which merely repeats the substance of the first:—